Changes

|title=Bed of Nails

|author=Antonin Varenne and Sian Reynolds (translator)

|publisher=MacLehose Press

|date=June 2012

|summary=Squint, and this is Fred Vargas, but beyond that this has a very commendable, straighter character on a dangerous path for the truth away from any moodily wacky detectives.

}}

When you're a policeman in Paris and your involvement in office politics takes a turn for the worse, you could end up in charge of suicides. That would make it your job to cope with all the jumpers, the pill-takers, the apparent suicide with two types of bullet through his head - even the naked men running into the flow of traffic around the ring-road. You might not get the case of the American junkie who dies performing a pierced-man act in a seedy club. No, looking into that is that man's closest friend, John, fresh from living in the French wilds as an outdoorsman. But in a Paris where cause of death can be so bizarre, a reason for death can have very far-reaching consequences...